Year-end lists are stories: They tell the truth by lying. The idea that a critic can watch all the television there is today, let alone isolate the 10 best works among wildly different genres, is a fiction. But play along with it, and you tell a larger tale about what mattered that year and why.

To whittle this story down to 10 titles required some little cheats. I left out ESPN’s revelatory documentary “O.J.: Made in America” because this publication reviewed it as a film. “Halt and Catch Fire” is as terrific as when I included it in 2015; I bumped it this year to make room. (Yet I repeated “The Americans,” “Transparent” and “Rectify.” Life is unfair.)

I didn’t number my list. (The best show of the year, if you’re asking, was “Atlanta,” but beyond that the order would have been arbitrary.) An improved “Better Call Saul” barely missed the cut, as did the best season of “Girls” since its first. There are series I couldn’t quite justify putting on this list but were crazy entertaining, like “Stranger Things.”

What remains is a sampler of TV as dizzying and agitated as the year we’ve just lived through. We live in interesting times, and we also get to watch them. — JAMES PONIEWOZIK

‘THE AMERICANS’ (FX) The direct heir to “Breaking Bad” may be “Better Call Saul,” but this 1980s spy drama also has a claim to that legacy. It uses a story of double lives (deep-cover Soviet spies) to create a sense of impending doom, with the added twist that its married protagonists are acting out of idealism, however misguided, not greed or bitterness. It’s a ground-level view of a Cold War chess match that has deep sympathy for the pawns.

‘ATLANTA’ (FX) For a series about people bumping up against limitations — a midlevel hip-hop star and his cash-strapped manager — Donald Glover’s comedy was limitless in its possibilities. Sliding from grit to surrealism, from pawnshops to mansions, “Atlanta” created a diorama of African-American life in its title city and a testament to the weirdness of existence.

‘BOJACK HORSEMAN’ (Netflix) The third season of this animated comedy follows the title character, a self-destructive movie-star horse voiced by Will Arnett, on the awards circuit for his new biopic, “Secretariat.” That journey, including a tour-de-force episode set at an underwater film festival, frames a hallucinatory but heartfelt story of one horse’s search for equine-imity.

Samantha Bee during the premiere of “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee.”CreditTBS

‘FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE’ (TBS) If we judge political comedy by its results — and god help us if we do — “Full Frontal” has no place here; the “screaming carrot demon” (to use one of Ms. Bee’s more printable insults for Donald J. Trump) won the election anyway. But comedically, “Full Frontal” arrived fully formed and furious, establishing an outrageous voice — shocking even within the constraints of basic-cable language — and an outraged sense of purpose.

‘HIGH MAINTENANCE’ (HBO) Along with “Black Mirror” and “Documentary Now!” (both of which nearly made this list) and Netflix’s uneven but adventurous “Easy,” this itinerant comedy of a Brooklyn pot dealer and his clients marked a creative resurgence of anthology TV. A move from the web to premium cable gave “High Maintenance” a production upgrade, but its humane curiosity remains pure and uncut.

‘HORACE AND PETE’ (louisck.net) Louis C.K. released his barroom drama without warning, and it unfolded like a crawl through a dark attic full of musty crates and family secrets. It seemed to exist outside of time, pouring one out for angsty 2016 within the walls of a 100-year-old dive bar, using internet-era distribution to recall the crackling immediacy of early theatrical television.

‘THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY’ (FX) With crackling scripts and criminally strong performances, this mini-series made a much-told story feel new again. Not only did it speak to America’s ongoing racial tensions, but it also ended up foreshadowing an election whose result — like the Simpson verdict — exposed a country whose two halves saw reality entirely differently.

‘RECTIFY’ (Sundance) Beginning with an ex-convict’s return to his small-town home, “Rectify” expanded over four seasons into a story of forgotten people — in halfway houses, nursing homes, big-box stores — trying to make peace with the unfairnesses of the past and find faith for the future. Its final season had two more episodes yet to air when I finalized this list, but I couldn’t leave it off. Miracles must be witnessed.

‘TRANSPARENT’ (Amazon) You could easily label the story of transgender senior citizen Maura Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor) and her extended family as insular liberal-bubble TV. In fact it’s a deeply empathetic show that lets every character — from fundamentalist Christians to Jewish radical feminists — be flawed and complicated. Messy, diffuse and ever-expanding, it’s like a hippie prayer circle where every congregant gets a turn.

The Best International Shows

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Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney in “Catastrophe,” from Britain.CreditAmazon Studios

Not that long ago, making a list of the best international shows on American television would have been as easy, and pointless, as reprinting the PBS “Masterpiece” schedule. That handful of British imports was essentially the only foreign programming available.

But like everything else in TV, that’s changed. My initial list for this first international Top 10 contained more than 80 shows, and that was a small slice of the foreign series available on TV or streaming services in 2016.

A few notes. Five of the 11 shows on the list are British comedies. That might seem excessive, but it reflects my feeling that some of the best, most imaginative work in the world is being done in that place and genre. (Also the most energetic. American sitcoms are at a peak, too, but the best ones tend to have a muted, distressed energy — the sheer vitality of the Britcoms can be a welcome relief.)

There’s also an overall Anglo- and Eurocentrism to the list. That’s partly because American programmers still overwhelmingly favor English-language shows, though streaming services do make a wealth of non-Western series available. So why no Korean or Chinese dramas, for instance? Because as attractive as some of them are, I still can’t reconcile myself to the saccharine and melodramatic formulas that seem to be mandatory in their original markets.

Finally, five of the 11 entries were first shown in the United States by Netflix. Whether it’s a matter of taste or of aggressiveness and large acquisition budgets, no one matches Netflix in the breadth and quality of its international offerings, beginning with my No. 1 show. — MIKE HALE

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Sarah Lancashire and Jamie Dorrington in the British series “Happy Valley.”CreditBen Blackall/Netflix

1. ‘HAPPY VALLEY’ Britain (Netflix) The writer Sally Wainwright started out in soap opera and domestic drama before shifting into crime, and “Happy Valley” is both a tough, sometimes harrowing cop show and a meticulous, emotionally charged portrait of a community. Season 2 picked up the story of a gruff, weary uniformed officer (the terrific Sarah Lancashire) and her nemesis (James Norton), and found believably frightening and moving ways to extend it.

2. ‘DETECTORISTS’ Britain (Acorn) Mackenzie Crook’s melancholy comedy about the minor triumphs of a pair of friends who share a passion for metal detecting is the most delicate of shows — it feels as if it might float away while you’re watching it. In its second season, Mr. Crook and especially Toby Jones continued their marvelous work as small-timers who, most of the time, mask their frustration and rage in hilariously ineffectual diffidence.

3. ‘GOMORRAH’ Italy (SundanceTV) The first season of this series, a traditional Mafia saga set in present-day Naples, was an addictive blend of speed, tension, desolate atmosphere and stark violence. While it raided the histories of both Italian and American film and gangster mythology for its look and style, it felt distinctly European, with an operatic realism unlike anything on American TV.

4. ‘CHEWING GUM’ Britain (Netflix) The playwright and actress Michaela Coel created and starred in this raucous, filthy, wildly inventive comedy about a young woman in the London projects whose sexual curiosity is in dire conflict with her Pentecostal upbringing. Ms. Coel’s performance as a nerdy wallflower bursting out of repression is matched by those of Susan Wokoma as her angrily devout sister and John Macmillan as her supercilious and curiously asexual boyfriend.

5. ‘CASE’ Iceland (Netflix) This smart and extra-chilly example of Nordic noir — a reboot of an earlier Icelandic series, “Rettur” — begins with the apparent suicide of a young dancer. Then it slowly expands into a repellent panorama of exploitation, in which young women are taken advantage of by parents (foster and biological), pimps, lawyers, youth counselors, hackers, classmates, ballet teachers, fellow dancers and just about anyone else you can think of. Magnus Jonsson and Steinunn Olina Thorsteinsdottir, as an alcoholic lawyer and a dour detective, make an art of moody inexpressiveness.

6. ‘FLEABAG’ AND ‘CRASHING’ Britain (Amazon, Netflix) Phoebe Waller-Bridge created, wrote and starred in both of these six-episode, London-set comedies this year, an impressive achievement. “Fleabag,” about a self-centered, often nasty but well-meaning young woman negotiating sex, love and family bonds, is the darker and more inventive of the two. “Crashing,” about the wacky-sad lives of a group of squatters in an abandoned hospital, is a more conventional sitcom. But both are sharp, funny and furiously up to date.

7. ‘MY HERO ACADEMIA’ Japan (Funimation) In the self-aware category of Japanese anime, this shrewdly written and dynamically drawn series posits a world in which 80 percent of humanity has developed some sort of special powers (not all of them super, and not all used for good). But it focuses on a fanboy who obsessively follows the new costumed heroes while having no abilities of his own — a perfect stand-in for the anime and manga audience.

8. ‘GLITCH’ Australia (Netflix) Dead people begin to claw out of their graves in a rural Australian town in this series that recalls the French show “The Returned,” but without the gloomy-doomy art-house veneer. It’s a solid, straightforward paranormal mystery that left plenty of unanswered questions for its second season (already announced as a Netflix coproduction).

9. ‘IN THE LINE OF DUTY’ Britain (Hulu) Season 3 of this cop drama about an anti-corruption unit (the equivalent of an American internal-affairs squad) in the West Midlands may have been slightly below the level of the taut, dread-inducing previous seasons. But it’s still the closest current analogue for the unadorned procedural pleasures of the early “Law & Order.”

10. ‘CATASTROPHE’ Britain (Amazon) Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney took their dark comedy of unexpected, not-quite-middle-age romance into new territory in a second season focused on the inevitable strains of parenthood. The writing wasn’t as seamless this time around — there were times when it felt as if the two were trying out stand-up routines on each other — but the best bits were still corrosively funny.

The Most Outlandish New Shows

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A scene from “Dream Corp LLC.”CreditAdult Swim

Who has benefited most from the explosion of television offerings in the last decade or so? I would argue that it has been people whose tastes in humor run toward the bizarre, the scathing and the incongruous. Television had long decades when “out there” meant “My Mother the Car” or “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” Eventually shows like “The Simpsons” began pushing matters of taste, and now, with entire channels and streaming services devoted to outlandish comedy, there are shows unpredictable enough, scalding enough or ribald enough for almost any skewed funny bone. Of the new ones that turned up in 2016, here are my favorite 10. — NEIL GENZLINGER

1. ‘BAJILLION DOLLAR PROPERTIE$’ (Seeso) This isn’t the most demented show on this list, but it’s among the sharpest. A workplace comedy in the style of “The Office,” filmed with fake-documentary flourishes, it’s about a Los Angeles real estate company that deals in high-end properties. How the company stays in business is a mystery, since the staff is full of misfits preoccupied with personal problems and infighting. The core ensemble clicks beautifully, and high-profile guest stars in ridiculous roles complete the package.

2. ‘STAN AGAINST EVIL’ (IFC) The tiny New England town of Willard’s Mill put scores of witches to death centuries ago, and since then its constables and sheriffs have had very short life spans. The wonderful John C. McGinley plays the only sheriff to have made it to retirement; Janet Varney portrays the new one. They reluctantly team to battle the town’s lingering demons. It’s a gruesome, deadpan delight.

3. ‘DEBATE WARS’ (Seeso) There’s a reason that Seeso, the comedy streaming service, is on this list more often than any other outlet: It takes more chances. Who would have thought that a simple series in which comics take on topics like “Cats vs. Dogs” in high school debate style could be so funny? Not many shows make me laugh out loud. This one had me on the floor. It was introduced amid the presidential campaign; it has lost its topical aura since, which is the only reason it’s not my No. 1.

4. ‘DREAM CORP LLC’ (Adult Swim) A dream-therapy company employs some decidedly unorthodox treatments in this daffy series, a mix of live action and animation. When patients nod off, the lead doctor (Jon Gries) inserts himself into their dreams, not always to beneficial effect. A sassy robot voiced by Stephen Merchant adds to the fun.

5. ‘LEGENDS OF CHAMBERLAIN HEIGHTS’ (Comedy Central) The great television tradition of having animated characters voice thoughts that a human actor never could is furthered by this cheeky show about three vulgar freshmen, bench warmers on the basketball team, who are trying to establish themselves at their high school. Fat jokes, racial jokes and sex jokes abound; the series requires a high tolerance for raunchiness. But the reward is that it makes points bluntly that other shows can only dance around.

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A scene from “Legends of Chamberlain Heights.”CreditComedy Central

6. ‘FLOWERS’ (Seeso) This comic drama, which turned up on Seeso in May, is almost indescribably off kilter and anchored by a terrific performance by Olivia Coleman. The matriarch of the titular Flowers family, she teaches music and balances on the edge of sanity. Her husband writes children’s books that a drunk Dr. Seuss might have produced. Their 25-year-old twins, Donald and Amy, still live at home, and both have romantic designs on the female neighbor next door. It’s the kind of domestic tableau you might encounter in “The Twilight Zone,” funny, unsettling and enthralling.

7. ‘BRAINDEAD’ (CBS) Not many network comedies are going to turn up on a list like this, but the summer series “BrainDead” was one of the oddest shows of the year. A bug infested Washington: not the flu, but an actual bug that crawled into people’s ears, took over their brains and turned them into empty-headed automatons. The thing was, inside the Beltway it was hard to tell the infected politicians and staff members from the regular ones. The show was delightfully cast — Aaron Tveit, Nikki M. James, Danny Pino, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jan Maxwell, Tony Shalhoub — and everyone embraced the zaniness. Alas, they will not assemble for an encore; the show wasn’t renewed.

8. ‘MR. NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE’ (Adult Swim) This was a one-off special, but it was a small masterpiece of unsettling ideas and imagery. It was a parody of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” joining Mr. Neighbor (Brian Huskey) on his kiddie TV show as he prepared to celebrate his “31st annual fifth birthday party.” It soon became clear that this was a gentleman with an extreme case of mommy-issue-itis.

9. ‘WRECKED’ (TBS) This summer series, a humorous version of “Lost,” hasn’t received much attention, but it’s a well-made show with a sly sense of incongruity. A plane crashes on an island; the survivors try to, well, survive. Among the major issues they face: where to go to the bathroom and what movie to watch with the last bit of DVD battery. It’s broad, sometimes gross comedy, delivered with verve.

10. ‘VICE PRINCIPALS’ (HBO) To like this series, you need to be able to tolerate two very unlikable lead characters. They are vice principals played by Danny R. McBride and the great Walton Goggins, enemies who band together to take on their new boss. The humor is often crass, and the lead characters have exceedingly foul mouths, but over all the series is an amusingly caustic variation on both the teenage comedy and the bromance genre.